Architecture Overview
The Evident ClearStone for Oracle Coherence monitoring platform consists of the following architectural components:
- Collection Framework
- Data Processing and Analysis Framework
- Operational Cache
- Data Warehouse
- Data Services Layer
- Rich Internet Application User Interface
Evident ClearStone for Oracle Coherence monitoring product architecture
Collection Framework (for Oracle Coherence monitoring)
The Evident ClearStone Coherence Adapter utilizes the clustered-JMX management capabilities of Coherence to collect performance metrics and events for Coherence members and services. Out of the box, the Adapter is pre-configured to support Oracle Coherence MBeans and Java Platform MBeans (MXBeans). Unlike traditional JMX monitoring approaches, the Adapter is a Coherence management-only member that serves as a JMX Agent and Client. This makes it efficient, network-friendly, scalable, and lightweight – there is no polling. This approach enables the Adapter to stream compacted real-time data and events to the ECSL Pipeline Server for processing. This is the only point of instrumentation of a monitored cluster – no agents are required. Regardless of real-time or historical use, data is only collected once. A High Availability option ensures continuous data collection of the cluster.
To complement the collection of performance data, a customized LOG4J appender is provided for collecting real-time log events from the Oracle Coherence members and other JVMs.
Data Processing and Analysis Framework
The Evident ClearStone Pipeline Server (patent-pending) is configured as a real-time inline transformation engine designed to aggregate, correlate, and enrich the collected performance data and events. The embedded “programmable” pipelines transform and enhance the raw collected data into processed information. For example, pipelines include threshold violation detection and log events processing. The engine includes rules-based threshold processing logic that enables users to apply thresholds for performance metrics. Upon threshold violations or receipt of erroneous events, the Pipeline Server can generate email notifications or SNMP traps to downstream management systems. The ClearStone Log Server consolidates streaming log events to disk and publishes SNMP alerts and email notifications for erroneous events. The Event Handler Plugin support customer-developed Java extensions that can perform additional functions based on events generated by ECSL.
Operational Cache
The Evident Operational Cache (OpCache) is an embedded distributed cache (based on Oracle Coherence) that serves as a “flight data recorder.” It provides the caching of all the real-time data and events from multiple collection endpoints, as well as the caching of the post-processed data for the Real-Time Console. This in-memory cache enables ClearStone for Oracle Coherence monitoring to delivery scalability and performance for real-time monitoring of larger environments.
ChronoGraphs and Data Warehouse
All the real-time data in the Evident OpCache is eventually summarized and stored as historical data into the Evident ClearStone Data Warehouse, which is optimized for storing time-series data, and is completely normalized and highly extensible. The data warehouse stores data with 5-minute, hourly, and daily granularity. The data is accessed by the optional ChronoGraph feature, which provides user customizable historical visualizations – user choices are not limited to pre-specified time periods.
Data Services Layer
This layer serves as a bridge between the ClearStone web applications and the data repositories. For the ClearStone Real-Time Console application, it is responsible for handling client side subscriptions and publishing updates from the OpCache to the user interface. For the ClearStone ChronoGraph Builder and Viewer, it is responsible for managing the historical templates and queries for ChronoGraphs to the data warehouse.
Rich Internet Application User Interface (Real-Time Console and ChronoGraph Builder)
This is the user interface for Evident ClearStone for Oracle Coherence monitoring. These applications are Rich Internet Applications based on Adobe Flex technology, which provide users with a variety of dashboards, charts, graphs, tables and visualizations for both real-time performance monitoring and historical trending. The ClearStone Real-Time Console provides multiple real-time views to analyze various aspects of the monitored environment and includes the ChronoGraph Viewer for displaying historical visualizations. The ChronoGraph Builder is a visualization designer tool that enables users to design new historical visualizations known as ChronoGraphs.
Implementation / Deployment
Evident ClearStone for Oracle Coherence monitoring has minimal to no impact to the performance of the monitored cluster. The solution only requires deploying the ClearStone Coherence Adapter (either with the ClearStone server or independently) that serves as a dedicated MBeanServer, which is a management-enabled node with storage disabled. The Adapter supports multicast and well-known address configurations. There is no need for obtaining custom application JARs or cache configuration files. If the grid is already configured with custom MBeans (such as Java Platform MBeans), then this data will be collected in addition to the Coherence MBeans. If required, multiple Adapters can be deployed for a high availability. To support real-time log monitoring and consolidation, users would require updating their LOG4J configuration and instrument the members with the Evident LOG4J appender. Installation is usually completed within the hour.
The dashboard and visualizations can be accessed from most web browsers equipped with an Adobe Flash plug-in. Support for the ClearStone ChronoGraph feature requires the deployment of the Evident ClearStone Data Warehouse. This is a dedicated database instance deployed on a separate server using an Oracle database provided by the user.
For more information on system requirements, please see the
